NT Text: 1 Peter 2:24
OT Source(s):
Source: Beale & Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007); Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment
Anchor Text: Isa 52:13-53:12 — The Suffering Servant
Significance: Peter closes his appeal with a near-verbatim quotation of Isaiah 53:5 — "By His stripes you are healed" (hou tō mōlōpi iathēte), shifting only Isaiah's first-person "we" to the second-person "you" addressed to his readers. The preceding clause, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree," fuses the sin-bearing language of 53:4 (nāśāʾ, "took up") and 53:12 ("He bore the sin of many"), while "on the tree" presses the Servant's death toward the cross (Deut 21:23). Peter thus reads the whole substitutionary structure of Isaiah 53 as fulfilled in Christ: the Servant's wounds are not merely endured but vicarious, accomplishing the "healing" of those for whom he was crushed. Crucially the "healing" is moral-spiritual — "so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness" — not bodily relief, anchoring the verse in atonement rather than a health gospel. The telos lands beyond imitation: the suffering servants of 2:18 are summoned not first to copy Christ's endurance but to be healed by his wounds, so that the wounded Healer becomes the supremely desirable object of trust whose stripes have already secured their wholeness.